The Study of Indigenous Pyrodiversity Management Practices in Central California: An Eco-Archaeological Approach

该奖项由2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助。在国家科学基金会的支持下，一个跨学科的学者团队正在研究加州印第安人采用景观管理做法的程度，特别是规定的焚烧，以提高当地经济植物和动物的生产力和多样性。关于加州狩猎采集群体在全新世晚期和历史时期对当地环境的管理程度，土著学者、生态学家、民族志学者和考古学家之间存在着相当大的争论。虽然一些人主张在北美其他地方发现的农业社会的规模上战略性地使用火和修改景观，但另一些人认为，在最近的文献中，管理实践的规模和复杂性被大大夸大了。这场争论远不止是一场学术活动。加州目前正在经历一场毁灭性的火灾(2008年发生了4000多起野火)，对财产损失、土地使用问题和州预算产生了严重影响。在正在进行的辩论中越来越多地提出的一个问题是，是否可以将土著景观做法的一些元素应用于加利福尼亚州的荒地管理，以增加土著物种的生物多样性，并减少燃料负荷和毁灭性火灾的频率。这项研究的目的有两个。首先是开发一种综合的生态考古方法，研究加州印第安人随时间推移的景观管理做法，特别是对规定的焚烧进行重点研究。这一方法将利用来自现场和场外环境的各种类型的生态和考古数据。将采用严格的方法收集微型植物遗骸(花粉、木炭、淀粉粒、植硅体)、大型植物样本、动物群材料、人工制品和可用于构建火灾历史和植被演替的楔形样本，并评估当地狩猎-采集社区中可能与火灾管理有关的文化做法。该方法还包括综合利用历史景观数据(照片、地图、顺序航空图像)、民族史料以及现存的土著口述历史和口述传统。第二个目标是将这种方法应用于基罗斯特山谷，这是加利福尼亚州中部阿尼奥新沃州立保护区新指定的“州立文化保护区”。这项工作将由一个由土著学者、考古学家、牧场管理研究人员和来自加州公园和娱乐部(DPR)、Amah MutsunOhlone部落、加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学圣克鲁斯分校和旧金山河口研究所(SFEI)的火灾生态学家组成的合作研究小组承担。研究小组将评估一种热多样性收集器模型，该模型假设狩猎-采集者通过煽动以频繁、小规模、低严重性表面烧伤为特征的火灾制度来增强和创造生物多样性。在评估这一模型时，团队成员将研究有关Quiroste山谷在全新世晚期和历史时期的火灾管理做法的性质、范围和影响，以及特定类型的做法是否可能减少了重大火灾风暴的频率和严重程度的研究问题。这项研究的学术价值是更好地利用考古学数据来评估有关过去火灾制度的问题，并确定狩猎采集社区创造人类环境的程度。这项研究的更广泛影响涉及考古学家和生态学家可以为研究和管理当代荒地和荒地-城市交界处的空地做出的重要贡献。在Año Nuevo州立保护区工作，项目研究人员处于理想的位置，不仅可以调查过去的土著火灾做法，而且可以与DPR资源专家和Amah Mutsun部落成员合作，利用从生态考古研究中获得的经验教训，开发管理当代景观的替代方法和观点。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).With support from the National Science Foundation, an inter-disciplinary team of scholars is examining the degree to which California Indians employed landscape management practices, particularly prescribed burning, to increase the productivity and diversity of economic plants and animals in local regions. There is considerable debate among Native scholars, ecologists, ethnographers, and archaeologists about the extent to which California hunter-gatherer groups managed local environments in the Late Holocene and Historic periods. While some argue for the strategic use of fire and landscape modifications on the scale of agrarian societies found elsewhere in indigenous North America, others believe the magnitude and complexity of management practices have been greatly over-exaggerated in the recent literature. This controversy is much more than an academic exercise. California is currently experiencing a devastating fire situation (more than 4000 wildfires in 2008), with grave implications for property loss, land use issues, and the state's budget. A question that is increasingly raised in the on-going debate is whether some elements of indigenous landscape practices might be applied to the management of wildlands in California to increase the biodiversity of native species and to decrease fuel loads and the frequency of devastating firestorms. The purposes of this study are twofold. The first is to develop an integrated eco-archaeological approach for the study of California Indian landscape management practices through time, with particular focus on prescribed burning. This approach will employ various types of ecological and archaeological data from both on-site and off-site contexts. A rigorous methodology will be implemented to collect microbotanical remains (pollen, charcoal, starch grains, phytoliths), macrobotanical samples, faunal materials, artifacts, and wedge samples from redwood stumps that can be used to construct fire histories and vegetation successions, and to evaluate cultural practices among local hunter-gatherer communities that might be associated with fire management. The approach also includes the integrated use of historic landscape data (photographs, maps, sequential aerial imagery), ethnohistorical sources, and extant Native oral histories and oral traditions. The second goal is to apply this approach in the Quiroste Valley, a newly designated "State Cultural Preserve" in the Año Nuevo State Reserve in Central California. The work will be undertaken by a collaborative research team comprised of Native scholars, archaeologists, range management researchers, and fire ecologists from the California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR), the Amah Mutsun Ohlone Tribe, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI). The research team will evaluate a pyrodiversity collector model which hypothesizes that hunter-gatherers enhanced and created biodiversity by instigating fire regimes characterized by frequent, small, low severity surface burns. In evaluating this model, team members will address research questions concerning the nature, extent, and implications of fire management practices in the Quiroste Valley during Late Holocene and Historic times, and whether specific kinds of practices may have curtailed the frequency and severity of major firestorms. The intellectual merits of this study are to make better use of archaeological data in evaluating questions concerning past fire regimes and to determine the degree to which hunter-gatherer communities created anthropogenic environments. The broader impacts of the study involve the important contributions that archaeologists and ecologists can make to the study and management of contemporary wildlands and open spaces in the wildland-urban interface. In working at Año Nuevo State Reserve, project researchers are ideally situated to not only investigate past Native fire practices, but to collaborate with DPR resource specialists and Amah Mutsun tribal members in developing alternative methods and perspectives for managing contemporary landscapes using lessons derived from the eco-archaeological research.